


This process is referred to as retransmission timeout, otherwise known as RTO.

If a packet weren’t sent to replace it, the recipient of the data would only receive part of the message, and likely in an incoherent form. When delayed, a packet will eventually time out, in which case a new packet is sent to replace it. When a packet is considered lost, it means it has gotten delayed or been misplaced within the hubs it has to travel through. Once delivered successfully, packets are given a time stamp. Packets have to move through a range of hubs to reach their destination, including fiber optics, wireless routers, and copper cables. But when combined, these packets achieve meaning. They’re just portions of the overall message being transmitted, which have been packaged into multiple layers. Alone, these units don’t necessarily make much sense. Rather, information is transmitted in what we refer to as “packets.” These packets, as their name suggests, are small, discrete units of data. Network traffic is often thought of as something that flows, like a stream or a river however, the information being transferred across a network does not form a single, coherent river of data. In this article, I’ll discuss packet loss testing, concluding with a list of my favorite packet loss test tools.īefore answering the question “What is packet loss?” you first have to understand what packets are. Packet loss causes network disruption, lags, and losses in connectivity, ultimately impacting business performance.
